ARIAS WITH A TWIST @ABRONS ART CENTER.
September 14-October 16
Wednesday-Saturday | 8 pm
Saturday Late Show | 10:30 pm
Sunday | 7 pm

This updated version of the original deliriously madcap fantasy once again features the soaring song stylings of demented diva Joey Arias surrounded by an eye-popping theatrical extravaganza conjured by a team of puppeteers under the direction of Basil Twist. Channeling lurid celluloid dreams, macabre nightmares and bizarre premonitions, the adventure begins with an alien abduction and concludes with a stupendous Busby Berkeley-esque finale. Along the way, the throaty chanteuse belts out pop, rock and jazz standards in addition to some original tunes by Alex Gifford as Twist and company work their magic with vintage marionettes, anatomically correct puppets and fantastical scenic elements.

Michael Alan’s Living Installation: THE WEDDING / VAMPIRE CIRCUS
Friday September 16th | 9PM – 3AM

What will happen when Michael Alan turns 7 performers into 2 separate Living Installations at the same time for 6 hours?

Moving between the two shows in one room, artist Michael Alien will build two Living Installations simultaneously within the raw space of ABC No Rio Gallery. The materials, sound, story, smell, space, time, characters and action will blend. The fairytales will merge and the energy will build with you as a part. This is not theater or a performance.This is you witnessing communication, being connected and being lost in the moment for as long as you want. This is a Living Installation, a living, breathing piece of art. 

Aaron Johnson: Freedom from Want: New Paintings
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 15, 6 – 8 PM September 15 – October 22, 2011

Stux Gallery is pleased to announce Freedom from Want, an exhibition of new paintings by Aaron Johnson. In paintings that are glimmering, seductive, and emanating light, Johnson’s monsters are gruesome, sadistic, and spewing venom. This body of work is a bold reflection on the decaying excesses of our insatiable culture. With obsessive enthusiasm, Johnson has delved deeper into his lexicon of Americana Grotesque and has plunged his fiendish monsters further into a theater of cosmic madness. These paintings invite us to binge upon an exquisitely detailed feast of severed heads, Uncle Sam monsters, sausage crucifixes, fried eagles, mashed guts, fuck-burgers, camel roast, mutant sea creatures, and oil oozing fresh from the rig. Lingering ghosts of a Rockwellian American idyll smile naively as the American dream boils over into an ecstatic hallucinatory nightmare. War machines, fueled by dog shit and the blood of Christ, churn across oil fields and battle fields, as the angel of death flies over with a cackle of furious laughter. As they reflect on the callous cruelty of war, the absurd intersection of religion and government, and the hell on earth that society thereby creates, these paintings come boldly forward from the artist’s admiration of past masters such as Goya, Bosch, Dieric Bouts, and Otto Dix. These works expose a desiring machine monster that consumes perpetually until there is nothing left to do but devour itself.

“We Are Nocturnal” by Kenzo Minami
Opening reception: September 16th, 6 – 9pm

graphite. is pleased to announce “We Are Nocturnal”, a collection of artworks by famed designer and artist Kenzo Minami. Through works in his upcoming show, Minami portrays a world that has surpassed its time—a world that was destined to end according to Nostradamus, The Book of the Law, the Antikythera mechanism, eschatology, and the like. Somehow, the world has cheated its own death and has moved into nightfall, the eventual midnight hour of humanity. As the hands of the Doomsday Clock continue to tick, we humans have slowly adapted to becoming nocturnal beings.Originally from Hyogo, Japan, Kenzo graduated from Parsons School of Design with a BFA in product design. He started as a set designer for TV broadcasts such as MTV and Sci-Fi Channel, which formed his career as art director, director, and motion graphic designer for the next 7 years. He also collaborated in multiple projects as interface designer with the media lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Minami was featured as an artist in multiple publications including The New York Times Magazine, V Magazine, Men’s Vogue, Dazed and Confused, and W Magazine, among many others. He was the first artist commissioned for a mural painting in Nike’s first art project space in New York City, as well as another show of Nike at Chelsea Art Museum. He had his first solo exhibit “Codex 408”, which included his mural painting, prints, and video work, at The Aquos Project in Soho, New York City. Another solo show “REMAKES” was held at The Gallery at Soho Grand Hotel, presented by Grandlife and Print Magazine in 2009.

JAMES DILLON–NINE RIVERS
Wed, Fri, and Sat, Sept 14, 16, and 17, 8 pm

Written over several decades and scored for 50 musicians and multimedia artists, James Dillon’s Nine Rivers covers a vast sonic terrain, from hushed a cappella singing to high-octane drumming. Members of the creative team behind the work’s acclaimed world premiere—percussionist Steven Schick and video designer Ross Karre—join with young American musicians from the International Contemporary Ensemble, chamber choir The Crossing, and percussion group red fish blue fish in this new
production of Nine Rivers.

Douglas Melini/Gary Petersen/Sarah Walker
September 8 – October 8, 2011

This exhibition explores how three artists, all of whom work in a geometric abstract vocabulary, create different modes of spatiality in their paintings: Douglas Melini, Gary Petersen, and Sarah Walker. Precisely executed plaid and stripe patterns animate the kaleidoscopic and symmetrical compositions in Douglas Melini’s colorful paintings. The artist thinks of them as visual energy fields, a “type of geometric net for the viewer…a vibratory field. I’m very interested in how our body and mind respond to vibratory experiences.” In his paintings, Melini creates a space that travels inward, oscillating back and forth, folding and unfolding within the picture, rather than expanding beyond its edges. His hand-painted frames, with geometric forms that echo those in the paintings, contain this inward movement, and when viewed from oblique angles become an active part of the visual field.

Lothar Hempel: Suedehead
September 15 – October 22, 2011

August 12, 2011—Lothar Hempelʼs ninth solo show at Anton Kern Gallery comprises three sculptures, five aluminum paintings, three diamond-shaped photo-montages, and a set of seven collages. The entire show is framed by the reference made in its title, Suedehead, a term describing an early 1970s subculture in the UK.

Gavin Kenyon: Wounds
Opening Wednesday September 14, 6 – 9pm 

Wounds is a selection of Gavin Kenyon’s cast-iron anthropomorphic sculptures of axes. His work reflects on the motivations and ethical complexities inherent in the violence of the human body. Mixing the use of tools with a painterly sense of flesh and bone, Kenyon’s work creates a sense of perversity and repulsion: an obese form given over to the consumption of everything around it, distended and encroaching; an appendage driven to injure itself; a broken limb, splintered insides exposed.

The Secret Science Club presents Ocean-o-Rama!
Wed., Sept. 14, 8 PM @ the Bell House

Rockefeller University’s Jesse Ausubel plumbs the amazing Census of Marine Life, a decade-long voyage of discovery involving 2,700 scientists in 80 nations. Hear about newly discovered ocean species such as zombie worms and Yeti crabs, never-before-seen ecosystems from hydrothermal vents to the icy Arctic, and deep-sea robotic submersibles. Step into liquid, and explore strange blue worlds where no one has gone before . .

Lesbians Seeing Lesbians: Building Community in Early Feminist Photography
Panel with JEB, Cathy Cade and curators:Thursday, Sepember 15, 6 – 8 pm

In the wake of the Civil Rights movement, the 1970s brought a feminist revolution with lesbians, not always acceptably, to the forefront. In pursuit of personal and political liberation, lesbians photographed each other within an emerging lesbian feminist community, asserting their right to self-representation within a context of straight men, gay men and straight women.

Danziger Gallery opens our fall 2011 schedule with a show of 84 Edward Steichen photographs printed by the renowned photographer George Tice. Tice was the last person to print for Steichen in his lifetime. These prints not only remind us of Steichen’s genius but also highlight the formidable quality of printing that George Tice has been known for throughout his career.

Carrie Moyer: Canonical
September 14 – October 16, 2011

Carrie Moyer’s new paintings are the most lyrical and personal works to date in her ever-evolving painting practice. “Canonical” displays a confidence in expressive power of pure abstraction. These paintings are simultaneously stripped down and filled up, full of surprising interplay between figure and ground, and enlivened by a brightly nuanced and carefully considered palette.

The use of masking and transparency feels boldly reinvented in these paintings; there is a boisterous give-and-take between shapes and contours. The evocative possibilities of ambiguity are evident. A strong use of line has newly emerged: no longer limited to preparatory drawing, the lines here have a heft, spontaneity and near symbolic significance. Decentralized, forms flow across the canvas, often passing through across and through one another.

2011 Next Wave Art @ BAM. Part of the 2011 Next Wave Festival
Sep 13—Dec 18, 2011

Next Wave Art returns for its landmark 10th year, opening up BAM’s unique exhibition spaces to some of Brooklyn’s most exciting artists working in a variety of media—with many continuing the tradition of displaying new, site-specific works. Launched in 2002 and curated annually by Dan Cameron, Next Wave Art has exhibited over 100 artists on BAM’s campus since its inception.

Now You See It…Color and the Mind’s Eye
Thursday, September 15th, 6-8pm
Panel Discussion Art: Color and Optics – Thursday, October 13th, 6:30pm ($5)

Brooklyn, (DUMBO), NY – Opening September 15th at CENTRAL BOOKING art space is “Now You See It…Color and the Mind’s Eye,” an exhibition that brings together 18 artists in their exploration of color. They examine the eye, play with sight, have us wonder at what it is we are seeing, or question the “how” as well as the “why.” Chuck Close, a modern Pointillist who builds images from mere scribbles of overlapping colors, takes the concept of the photographic dot into a new realm. Martha Hayden plays with our brain’s perception of color as space, with the variation on the eternal push/pull of the figure/ground question. The videos of Berlin artist Gerhard Mantz parade colors and shapes before us as they appear to morph from one plane to the next. Kate Temple takes her extensive studies of color theory, from Goethe onwards, to create atmospheric filterings through space, to see or not to see bare glimmers of landscape; David Ambrose layers color upon color until we see the glowing vibrations of transparencies ready to burst forth beyond the rectangle- or back into it. Yet the space in Nola Zirin’s paintings becomes a space of blue, as our eye winds around from deep space to the surface – or does it? But Sarah Stengle may be blue but blue still has its deeper meaning in a quest for what it does mean to be blue.

ALIEN SUNS @ DIXON PLACE

XSb-U-Ghl-Xia-:+*-Xagh-skavovsky (X1) has returned after 4000 years to a bitter and emboldened lover, XAHYA -330 -PLAXIS- PTOTOPHALIS (X2) who waited through thousands of millennia of changing civilizations and geocontinental transformations desperately hoping that his longtime soulmate might return- reborn into a species compatible with his own.

X1 is afflicted with a rapid degenerating illness which causes him to age a full 100 years in the span of 5 and then die- only to be reborn anew every 5 years, while X2 has the reverse illness. He never can never die. (No matter how hard he tries) Their differences, and the painful past experiences have not, however, done anything to reduce the great passion that they two have for one another.

Featuring original music, the poetry of Edgar Allen Poe and performances by

Chris Carlone (Borts Minorts) – X1
Stu Watson (No Sky God) – X2
Phillip Burch – Bells
Mara Mayer – Bass Clarinet
Jay Pluck – Grand Piano
Rachel Mason – Vocals
Valerie Kuehne (Dream Zoo) – Cello
Michael Durek (PAS/CloudCloud) – Theramin
Haylee Nichele – Dance
David Smith (Doom Trumpet) – Harmonica
Adrienne Anemone – Ukelele

Stage props by Tim Dowse
Costumes by Heather Quesada and Rachel Mason

LJOVA AND KONTRABAND @BARBES
Fri 09/16 

Eastern-European and Gypsy melodies, Latin rhythms, Jazz-inspired improvisations, and deeply rooted Classical forms are given new meanings in original compositions with a nostalgic gaze towards the past. Founded by maverick film composer, arranger, and violist Lev ‘LJOVA’ Zhurbin — hailed by Billboard magazine as “one of New York’s fastest rising composers and instrumentalists” — the ensemble also features his close collaborators on vocals, accordion, bass and percussion. Inspired by his collaborations with Yo-Yo Ma, Osvaldo Golijov, the Kronos Quartet, the rapper Jay-Z and others, Ljova’s compositions dazzle with intricate textures, odd rhythms and lilting melodies, creating music that is both fresh and timeless

PAINT WORKS AT THE GOWANUS BALLROOM
Opening September 16, 2011

The premise of Paint Works is pretty straightforward: there are a host of bad-ass painters out in our nearby environs, doing what they do and doing it really well. We are bringing that energy, those skills, and that vibe together in an art show focused solely on innovative contemporary painting.

THE WALL STILL STANDS: Norm Paris
September 16 – October 23, 2011 

Paris’ work explores the unfixed relationship between an evolving group of icons, their shifting mythologies, and the languages used to represent them. In recent drawings and sculptures, old paintings and sports clippings are hijacked and used as blueprints for a haphazard building project. People are substituted with building material, and “green” technology is improperly installed. Structures of questionable integrity struggle to find their place in the landscape.

Sacred Spaces in Profane Buildings
Sept 14-Nov 5, 2011, Opening Reception September 13, 7pm

Through analytical and speculative works, Sacred Spaces in Profane Buildings is a public archive and exhibition that explores the impact of religious diversity on the contemporary city and the new, non-traditional spaces in which contemporary religious pluralism manifests itself. The diffusion of new urban religious communities is a central feature in growing contemporary urban societies: until a few years ago, it was thought that the link between public and religious places would gradually disappear as societies gave way to secularity. However, the demand for religious spaces has not diminished, it has simply been altered. Sacred Spaces in Profane Buildings describes the birth of religious architecture and communities as it manifests itself in the contemporary urban context. The project is a transversal investigation of the architectures, policies and multitude of individual acts through which each religion inhabits and transforms the city of New York.

Jazz & Poetry For The Dizzy Gillespie Memorial Fund @LPR.
Thu., September 15, 2011 / 6:30 PM

Dizzy Gillespie is one of the most influential figures in many American musical forms, having first revolutionized jazz in the 40s by being one of the acknowledged inventors of bebop; and then again in the decades that followed when he championed the rich rhythms of Afro-Cuban, Caribbean, and Brazilian music that, to a large extent, still dominate jazz to this very day. Born October 21, 1917, Cheraw, South Carolina, John Birks Gillespie, Dizzy moved to Philadelphia with his family at age 18 and joined Frankie Fairfax’s band before moving on to New York City and Teddy Hill’s big band in 1937, Later he played with all the greats–Ella Fitzgerald. Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Earl Hines, and Billie Holliday. He met Charlie “Bird” Parker in 1940, Thelonious Monk, and others. Gillespie was the first jazz artist to be sent abroad under the auspices of the United States government, spreading American goodwill and good music around the world. John Birk s Gillespie died on January 6, 1993, Englewood, New Jersey. The Dizzy Gillespie Memorial Fund helps underwrite the costs of hospitalization, diagnostic tests, and a full range of surgical and medical care for jazz musicians who are uninsured and without the ability to pay. Since its formation, the Dizzy Gillespie Memorial Fund-Englewood Hospital has provided over $5 million in medical services, the Fund is 100% donor supported.

30: A Brooklyn Salon Celebrating Thirty Years of Contemporary Art at BRIC Rotunda Gallery
Curated by Elizabeth Ferrer, Director of Contemporary Art
Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 14, 7–9pm
September 15 – October 29, 2011

30: A Brooklyn Salon celebrates BRIC Rotunda Gallery’s status as Brooklyn’s oldest continuously operating contemporary art space and offers a look back at the wealth of artists who shaped the character of our exhibition program over three decades. The exhibition includes work by some 50 Brooklyn-affiliated artists, spanning a range of media: painting, works on paper, sculpture, photography, video, and a site-specific commission on the gallery’s storefront by Jackie Chang.

View a special performance by exhibiting artist Francisca Benitez at 7:30pm on the corner of Pierrepont Street and Cadman Plaza West (weather permitting)

The Desk Set presents: Detroit Retold Revised Re-visioned

The Desk Set is a group of New York City area librarians, archivists, bibliophiles, and other bookish types who wish to explore and enjoy literary resources, connect with like-minded readers, and raise money for institutions that promote literacy.

Detroit Disassembled: Photographs by Andrew Moore
opening celebration on September 18th.

The Queens Museum of Art is pleased to host Detroit Disassembled: Photographs by Andrew Moore, organized by the Akron Art Museum. The exhibition of thirty large scale photographs will be on view August 28th 2011 – January 15th 2012, with an opening celebration on September 18th.
During 2008 and 2009, Moore spent 3 months in Detroit. Once the epitome of American industrial wealth and might, the Motor City has faced declining population and economic distress for half a century.

Fiction is Fact
Wed, Sept 14, 6-9 pm: Opening Reception

We use facts to tell a story, yet all the facts together neither make a story nor do they make a story more true—only more concrete in the telling. In art as in literature, one can use as one’s medium not only pigment or wood or stone or digital media, but the concept that something is either a well fashioned fabrication or a document of evidence. Ideas (and the preconceptions that accompany them) are part and parcel of any artistic creation’ public reception. The directed employment of a certain impressions, based in ideological truth, help form the basis for one’s esthetic pleasure. For each of the artists in this salon, the same can be said to be true, though they come to it via different routes.

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Art Station @Lukoil.
David Allan Peters @Backroom.
BERNARD COHEN:WORK OF SIX DECADES
Aliza Eliazarov: Sustain 
Marc Hundley, Joan Baez is Alive
Mortified @92nd St Y 
The New York Clown Theatre Festival
Mike Childs @RHV Gallery.
The Prom You Were Promised: A Benefit for 826NYC
The Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival @The Bell House
Amoralists presents: HOTELMOTEL, the off-broadway at Gershwin Hotel
ANDREW MOUNT: GRAPHEMES AND EPIGRAPHS.
AN EVENING WITH JUSTIN VIVIANBOND@SYMPHONY SPACE.
GROUP SHOW (JAMES GRECO, HOLLY MILLER, AUDREY STONE AND ROBERT WALDEN) @ MURIEL GUEPIN
Puppet BloK gets PUNCHED/PLANET EGG.
“The Creators” curated by Alexis Wuyts @ POETRY CLUB.
Richard Serra @Gagosian.JEAN-PAUL CATTIN: MOTEL DE FOUNEX
EAF11: 2011 Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition
PITCH: PAUL EDMUNDS @RH GALLERY
Bomba Estéreo w/ Navegante and DJ Rockass @Le Poisson Rouge.
CONTEMPORARY DRAWINGS FROM GERMANY @VOGT.
To a Great City by Arvo Pärt and Snøhetta, part of stillspotting nyc.
Reflections @FORDProject.
Poetry from the Rooftops: Deborah Landau, Srikanth Reddy, Atsuro Riley
TABAIMO : DANDAN @James Cohan.
stefanos tsivopoulos @ISCP.
Eve Sussman | Rufus Corporation.
Rose Klabin / Rodolpho Parigi “Works On Paper”
Drunken Careening Writers
According to Zhao Zhao: New Works
IMAGINE SCIENCE FILM FESTIVAL BENEFIT PARTY
Kevin Geeks Out about Rip-Off Cinema
Breaking Open the Head: Minday Shapero
This Is Not My Color / The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Jeff Huntington